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With rise of people journalism, the quest for truth can be marred by evil intentions
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WEIXIN, or WeChat, is becoming a very efficient instrument for receiving and spreading information.
This information can be personally generated, but more often a WeChat user plays the role of an amplifier, as he/she is busy duplicating or sharing information. It is usually innocuously anecdotal or entertaining, but sometimes it also includes politically sensitive stuff.
Like all efficient instruments, it can lead to positive change by overwhelming dissemination of information, like the latest case involving migrant workers trying to get back their wages.
When a group of construction workers tried to get their pay in a construction site in northern China’s Shanxi Province on December 13, they were stopped by the security guards. A scuffle ensued. They were taken to a police station, where a female worker was allegedly beaten to death, while her husband suffered several broken ribs.
The incident could have been hushed up but for a video that started to be spread online on December 24 showing a police officer standing on the hair of the female worker. The exposure led to a public uproar, media reports, and then arrests of several police officers.
Predictably, so handy a tool as Weixin can lead to manipulation and abuse. On January 3, it was circulated among WeChat users that a 3-year-old girl in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, got lost on December 29.
“The girl was sick at that time, and had not taken medication for several days. The mother was distraught for worry,” the message said.
Double-edged social tools
Given the sensational nature of the message, which was accompanied by pictures of the child, the news quickly spread among WeChat users, many of them college students and young mothers eager to help the mother.
But on the morning of January 4, Nanjing police revealed that this message was fabricated by the mother, who was suing her divorced husband for more money. The court case was to be heard on January 6, and the “missing” child was actually in safe custody of the father.
With the rise of WeChat, mobile phones cease to be a mere convenient tool for communication. They also take on social functions unimagined a few years ago. Before I started using WeChat a couple of months ago, I had been repeatedly warned by friends that I would be “out” if I still refused to use it.
It had created a virtual community where information, whether personally generated or received from nobody knows where, could be shared and shared again, at minimal cost, and instantly.
The ease of sharing and clicking links fuels the illusion of instant transmission and gratification. In a tacit revolt against standard fare provided by our traditional media, various social tools create the impression about total access to truth at its best, uncensored, undiluted, before the watchdog has time to euphemise or harmonize.
This is a particularly tantalizingly new experience for the peasants who formerly have had limited access to the Internet. But many of the WeChat users lack the sophistication to judge the quality of the information created by “people journalists,” who are not only free of censorship but also free of the rigors of professional news collection.
Traditional news collection can be a time-consuming and costly process.
Given the nearly steady flow of information available for eager WeChat users, it can be easily understood why information most likely to be shared and spread is that of a sensational nature.
Rigors of news collection
In the past, when residents tried to defend the authenticity of their information, they were wont to say, “I have this from newspapers (or radio, or television).”
That’s news collected by professionals following standard procedures. These procedures, however limiting, ensure that facts and figures are double checked, details verified, and, most important, their potential social impacts evaluated. While the production of news for official media is subject to self-censorship and guidelines by the publicity department, the news online can be created spontaneously.
Without these scruples, many WeChat users are effusive about the availability of information, while ignorant of their lack of the sophistication to evaluate the risks inherent in this people journalism, where egregious facts and cheap sentimentalism can be a ruse to woo attention. The tendency to embrace this brave new cyberworld is encouraged by the perception that when you are consuming or duplicating this kind of information, you are free of the prying eyes of scrutiny as in the real world.
Therefore, most people are more willing to share information via WeChat than in the real world.
An ex-colleague of mine sent a politically sensitive link to a shared WeChat space a couple of days ago, and he was advised by a veteran journalist not to publish such sensitive stuff, for self-protection and the protection of others.
I later explained to him why this is very sound advice, if only for the simple reason that it is virtually impossible to delete anything in cyberspace.
When the initial enthusiasm about easy publishing and sharing of information online has abated, there is every reason to expect the legislative and regulatory authority to weigh in, to try to sanitize cyberspace of rumors, the socially disruptive or the sensational.
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